Inlaid With Jade - Chapter 64

Chapter 64 
Spirit Tablet 
  
The Li Mansion ancestral hall contained countless ancestral tablets. Because of the fear that wind and rain would corrode the wooden tablets, the windows were covered tightly with curtains all year round. Once the door was closed, the heavy atmosphere of the ancestral hall suddenly became creepy and gloomy in the silence. 
  
The smoke from the incense curled, and the dim candlelight vaguely illuminated the familiar and unfamiliar names on the tablets. Xu Qingyin knelt on the futon and looked calmly at the tablet with the three words “Li Fenglin” written at the bottom. 
  
Her maid stood far away at the door where the light came in, and her eyes timidly swept across the dim corners on the left and right. She looked worried, obviously afraid of this place where the dead were worshipped. 
  
Xu Qingyin usually burned incense and worshiped Buddha as if she believed in ghosts and gods, but at this moment, she was not afraid. She lit the yellow papers and threw them into the funeral basin, burning them slowly. She tore each piece before throwing it in. The flames burned it to ashes when it fell into the basin. 
  
There was a folk saying that if one didn’t burn the paper money thoroughly, the people below would not be able to receive it. Xu Qingyin’s face no longer held her eager smile when she saw Lin Yu. The firelight flashed across her cold and tired eyebrows. She was dressed in white and looked like a female ghost. 
  
She whispered to Li Fenglin’s tablet: “Don’t blame me for not visiting you these months. Your good brother drove me out of the mansion before the New Year. It is inconvenient for me to come to the Li Mansion. I am afraid that I will not be able to come often in the future. You can save this money yourself down there. If you use it up, it will be gone.” 
  
After she finished speaking, the ancestral hall became quiet again. The maid did not dare to talk to her, and the cold spirit tablet naturally would not answer her. 
  
Xu Qingyin was used to the slightly cold silence at the moment. She didn’t need others to respond to her words and continued: “Don’t blame me for being stingy and why I didn’t burn more for you. I don’t have much money. You know I’m not good at business. The business of the shop you left me is not very good. I can barely make a living. I don’t have much.” 
  
“By the way, I returned to my mother’s house a few days ago. It took me almost 20 days to go back and forth. I wanted to go home to see my family. But I couldn’t come up with money, so everyone disliked me. Ming Ge’er, who used to call me “sister” affectionately, is no longer warm. My parents also look at me with disgust. They complain about how useless I am that I can’t even hold on to the golden pillar in your Li family.” 
  
Xu Qingyin’s voice sounded sad. At this point, she even laughed: “They can only complain, but they don’t know that I have worked hard. I have already put down my dignity and am willing to be your brother’s concubine, but he doesn’t want me. What can I do?” 
  
She chattered about family matters in front of the tablet of the dead as if her husband, who died early, was still alive, but the unreserved words made the maid at the door feel numb. She couldn’t help but say: “Madam, if your husband’s spirit in heaven heard this, he would blame me.” 
  
Xu Qingyin was silent momentarily: “…The spirit in heaven?” 
  
She looked up at the dark roof to see where the spirit was: “If he has a spirit in heaven, why did he only watch me suffer in the world all these years and refuse even to entrust me with a dream?” 

She lowered her head and curled her lips mockingly: “When Father died in the war, he was far away outside the Great Wall, my mother-in-law was ill and bedridden, and Erlang was young. I was the one who had to humble myself and deal with outsiders and suffered all kinds of difficulties. Where was he when I was criticized and cursed? Where was he when I had no one to rely on and outsiders resent me?” 
  
As she spoke, her tone revealed hatred, and tears in her eyes floated: “Is there another woman like me, who has been married to her husband for many years but has only seen him a few times, and he even died without a body! In the most difficult time for the Li Mansion, I did not hide or avoid and shared the joys and sorrows with him. I have done my best. He left and was relieved. What kind of person who doesn’t want to live? What qualifications do you have to blame me now?!” 
  
The maid, who had accompanied her to this point today, witnessed how the difficulties of these years gradually wore away her excellent temper. Her eyes turned red when she watched her complaining to her husband’s spirit tablet.
  
Xu Qingyin turned her head to wipe away her tears. The silver hairpin slipped out of her hair and fell to the ground with a crisp sound. She turned back and stared at the silver hairpin that fell on the basin’s edge. She didn’t move for a long time. 
  
Seeing this, the maid hurriedly picked up the silver hairpin and handed it to her. Xu Qingyin took it with trembling hands and whispered: “Go out…” 
  
The maid looked at her slender back worriedly: “Madam…” 
  
Xu Qingyin waved her hand behind her back, as if she couldn’t hold back her tears anymore, and said in a choked voice: “Go out… I’ll talk to him for a while.” 
  
The maid said “ah” and had to respond: “Yes, Madam.” 
  
The door slowly opened behind her, making a long, rough sound. Bright spring light flowed into the room and shone on Xu Qingyin’s white clothes, but soon, the light was gradually gathered into a beam by the two doors closing and disappeared with a “bang.” 
  
The ancestral hall returned to peace. Xu Qingyin knelt on the futon, lowered her head, and carefully stroked the forsythia carved on the hairpin: “You made this hairpin at the border and brought it for me. I have kept it for so many years.” 
  
She took out a silk handkerchief, gently wiped off the invisible dust on the petals of the forsythia, and put the hairpin back into her bun: “I don’t blame you for not being able to protect me when you were far away at the border. But now I want to support myself. If I hurt your Li family, don’t blame me.” 
  
As if afraid he would not agree, she looked at his tablet and slowly repeated it: “You can’t blame me, Li Fenglin. When I married you, I thought we would be together for the rest of our lives.” 
  
She stared at the three words “Li Fenglin” on the tablet, took a deep look, then stood up and walked out, leaving an unwavering voice behind: “If you don’t agree, then turn into a fierce ghost and come to take me away personally.”